


broken down without walls

by therjolras



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Canon Jewish Character, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-09-02 10:19:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8663689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therjolras/pseuds/therjolras
Summary: Erik doesn't know, and he doesn't know, and he doesn't know.==Apocalypse, and what happens after.





	

**Author's Note:**

> so last night I watched XMA with the fam and then sat down and wrote this instead of going to bed. it's not the work I'd like to write, about Erik and Peter and all the pain and the spiritual side of Erik and stuff, but other people have already written those and they've written them really good. 
> 
> also you could listen to "I'll Be Good" by Jaymes Young because I think about it and Erik a lot.
> 
> the title is from Proverbs 25:28. I honestly don't know if quoting the bible for a bit about a Jewish character is off-color? but I figured, Solomon was a Jewish king first. if you're Jewish and it bothers you, talk to me about it. I desire to learn.

Erik doesn’t know, and he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t know.

He spends years looking over his shoulder. Years growing used to names that are not his own, feeling his powers prickle under his skin, untapped. Years learning to move slowly, to ignore the instinctual sweep for metal, for protection. Work at the factory is hard, and the noise and the hours are exhausting, but the metal all around him soothes; it is a blanket, a balm, one he need not even reach for. It simply is.

(Better for him, though, are Anya and Nina. They help him forget; with them he is not Magneto, he is hardly even Erik. He is a man alone in the woods with his wife and his daughter and his daughter’s many friends, and he is at peace. There is no need to protect himself, to cast about for weapons, to catalogue every escape route and the best places to make one. Anya and Nina are protection enough for his fragile spirit.

He should have thought more about protecting them.)

Erik does not know where his spirit goes, when Anya and Nina go still in his arms. He does not believe that it follows their spirits upwards. Perhaps, he muses, as he walks away from hastily dug graves and the policemen’s bodies piled unceremoniously for someone to find, perhaps it has flown downwards without him. Perhaps it has gone to the dark place prepared for sinners, for traitors and thieves and murderers. Perhaps, he thinks, he died with them, and he is naught but his spirit, doomed to wander, waiting for absolution.

En Sabah Nur does not speak any absolution to Erik’s ears, but he tells Erik to raze the world to the ground, and Erik does not refuse. The world has been cruel to him. He owes the world nothing.

But Charles--

Raven-- 

The children that follow their banner, the young, hopeful children that want to save the world, that cry out under this new master’s hand--

They have something Erik longs for. They have each other. They have a purpose. They have a future. They have Hank, and Raven, and Charles.

(He knows the man who comes with Raven, who stands silent and uneasy as Raven tries to reason with Erik. The man with unruly silver hair who was a boy ten years ago, who talked too much and smiled and was too outrageous to be any hallucination Erik could come up with. His name is Peter. He claims to be here for family. He looks at Erik as if Erik is a ghost, which he may well be. Peter does not want to stay, but he does not seem to want to leave.

Peter is the one to cry out, when En Sabah Nur finally enters the battle.)

It is too late for Erik, but it is not too late for Peter. It is not too late for those children who fight, who fight for Charles and the world. Erik can fight for them.

(En Sabah Nur does not fall by Erik’s hand, but he falls.)

When it is over, Erik goes with Charles and the others to New York. He helps rebuild, and skirts carefully the many children who flinch at his passing. He knows that his power and Jean Grey’s are nothing alike, but he teaches her what he can, about tapping into the nature of things and not being overwhelmed by the power one possesses. Between them, they lay bricks and stone and framing and glass and the many, many small nails that under Erik’s ministration fly into place like swarms of tiny, metal bees in neat rows. They do not build alone, of course. It is not a job for two, the job of raising a house as large as Charles’s.

It is not a job for Erik, to make said house a home.

He goes traveling. He takes up Raven’s old post, finding the lost and the helpless and giving them hope, safe passage. Some will find their way to Charles. Some trail along in his wake and share their hope with others. They are not the X-Men. They are not the Brotherhood. They are not Erik’s family. But the work they do, it means something.

(Erik does not know what he is doing. He does not recall the last time he allowed himself to hope.)

He visits Charles. The few that travel with him mingle amongst Charles’s students and Erik worries that the two parties will not get along, but he allows it to slide and he retreats into Charles’s study and the two of them play chess and talk and it is like a piece of his past given back to him. He does not know what to do with it.

Before he leaves, the man Peter seeks him out. Erik has asked Charles about him, this man who was a boy when Charles and Hank and the strange, hairy man enlisted him to break Erik out of prison. Who remarked, offhanded, that his mother had known a man with powers like Erik’s. Peter’s last name is Maximoff. Erik knows that name. 

When Peter asks if they can talk, Erik says yes.

They walk to the edge of the grounds, where the students are few and far between. The longer they walk, mostly in silence, the more uncomfortable Peter becomes. Erik does not stop until he believes they are well away from prying ears, but when they are well alone he asks Peter about his mother. Peter’s dark eyes widen and then he names a woman whom Erik had dared to love, many many years ago. Before Charles, before Raven. When he was still looking for Schmidt, fleeing from Schmidt. Peter’s mother is Magda Maximoff.

When Peter says that Erik is his father, stammering, twisting the hem of his ridiculous silver jacket in his fists, Erik knows it to be true. But he knows little else, and he tells Peter so, although he withholds describing the grief he lives with every day. The loss of a child, a wife, the losses of friends and lovers. This is not the time for grief. This is Erik, and this is a son,  _ his  _ son, a family he didn’t know he had. This could be a mistake he made many years ago, or it could be a second chance. This could be hope.

“No fear, man,” Peter says, all bravado. He is afraid. He is a braver man than Erik ever was. “I guess we’ll figure something out.”

Erik doesn’t know much. This once, though, he knows hope.

**Author's Note:**

> remember to leave a comment, writers thrive off of knowing what people think of them. also, if you want to say hi, or enjoy a dump of batfam/tim drake feelings, my tumblr is @captainpeggys. thank you so much for reading!


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